Six Turkish soldiers were killed and seven people, including civilians, wounded on Sunday when a car bomb exploded near a police station in a border region of the country's southeast, security sources said. The sources said the blast hit the Durak gendarmerie station, 20 km (12 miles) from the town of Semdinli, in a mountainous part of Hakkari province near the border with Iraq and Iran, where Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants are active. The privately-owned Dogan news agency said the explosion occurred during vehicle searches on the road in front of the police station. The PKK, which launched a separatist insurgency in 1984, is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. A two-year ceasefire between the group and Turkish authorities collapsed in July last year and the violence subsequently flared to levels not seen since the height of the conflict in the 1990s. Meanwhile, Turkish military said ion Sunday that 31 Daesh militants were killed in clashes and US-led coalition air strikes in northern Syria over the last 24 hours. Syrian rebels, backed by Turkish tanks and air strikes, have been pushing towards the Daesh stronghold of Dabiq, a village with symbolic importance to the terrorists, in an operation launched in late August. Fourteen of the Daesh fighters were killed as they attempted to enter the rebel-controlled villages of Akhtarin and Turkmen Bareh, 3 km (two miles) east of Dabiq, the Turkish army said in a statement. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that Daesh fighters had captured those villages in a counter attack near the Turkish border. Another 17 Daesh fighters were killed in air strikes by coalition warplanes in the same areas, the military said in its daily round-up on the operation, dubbed "Euphrates Shield." It said two Syrian rebels had been killed and 19 wounded in the latest fighting against Daesh. The operation has also targeted a Kurdish militia whose presence along its border Turkey sees as a threat.
